Something Good
by blueandblack
Summary: Was listening to some music and thought of Cook and Effy on the road in 310.  And when I go there, I go there with you, it's all I can do.


The moment Cook starts to love Effy is the moment he realizes she could start to love him if she wanted to.

Nevermind that it's also the moment he realizes she loves Freddie – turns out she actually _loves_ him, and it has nothing to do with the way they throw that word around.

It has nothing to do with the games they play.

(No need for him to tick any boxes. He's not a closet fuck. He's not someone you escape with.)

***

The conversation goes something like this.

Effy, with a slight smile and a pre-emptive shrug: "Do you think they miss us?"

Cook: "Nah. Fuckers'll be too busy picking out their party frocks, won't they?"

(He's lying but he's half-right.)

Effy looks at him for a while after that. She watches him like you thread a needle.

She thinks about what she's going to say next till it seems like the conversation's over, and that's why Cook's mouth is hanging around _Breakfast,_ when she says "Freddie will. Miss you."

Four words, two pairs. She's not in either of them.

She presses her palms into the pavement, fingers the grit.

Cook snorts, rolls their morning spliff, shakes last night's plaster out of his hair.

(He can't remember what went down exactly, but he likes to think that somewhere behind them there's a building on its knees.)

"Freds hates us, remember?" The lighter sparks, Cook smirks, Effy turns her head. "If Freds is thinking about the two of us right now it'll be fire and brimstone and all kinds of righteous bitching."

Cook laughs – it's silent but his head is flung back for effect. He takes a drag when he's done and holds the spliff out.

Effy counts to ten with her mouth closed.

When she looks his way again, she thinks she is a full-body mask.

She's not - not quite – not to him.

And that's the moment.

***

They've been on the road a couple of weeks now and he's already way ahead of her.

She's so fucking nice to him all the time and it's so easy for him to kid himself that she's starting – maybe – or she'll start soon - tomorrow - tonight – sometime in the next five minutes.

Effy lets Cook twirl her in and out of street-light smudges, laughs when he says they'll dance back to the car.

It's miles. He's mad. Her eyes widen and she pulls hard on his arm.

Cook stumbles against her with giddy expletives and she's saying _Shh,_ she's shoving her hand into the pocket of his jeans, she's pulling out the keys, she's shaking them high above her head.

"Music," she explains, and Cook grins, his heart thunders, he calls her Tinkerbell.

"No," Effy says with a very straight face. "Tinkerbell's blonde."

"Says who?"

He's turning her around again and she's too thoughtful for her feet. She almost trips, and when he catches her she kisses him fiercely, she smiles, she asks "J. M. Barrie?"

"Fuck J. M. Barrie."

Effy's brow furrows. "Disney?" she tries.

"Fuck Disney even harder."

The words blur till they make a kind of sense the two of them are very used to, and Cook ends up on his back in tall grass by the side of a silent road, Effy ends up naked from the waist down.

***

They're going nowhere when he says he wants to find his Dad.

Effy looks down, says okay.

And before she looks up again: "Maybe I'll have a look for mine too. He can't have gone far."

Cook holds her hand that day – all day, while he drives.

She's wide-awake with her head on his shoulder.

***

Effy has always called herself cold, but Cook doesn't hear it anymore.

(So many nights he's shivered into her skin, so many nights she's wrapped herself around him.

He has always woken up warm.)

He knows.

He knows she loves.

He knows she loves the boy they both left behind.

But he also knows she could start to love _him_ - if she wanted to.

It's the best Cook has got, and it shouldn't be nearly good enough, but it is.

It really is.

When they're together like this - on the road, on their way to something good.

(When his body is her bed.

When his hands are asleep in her hair.)


End file.
